VST Instruments, MIDI Channels and external controllers

Cubase
1

Hoping someone can shed some light on where I am going wrong here.

I am trying to control VST Instruments from external MIDI hardware and I can’t seem to get the instruments to respond to different MIDI channels - no matter what MIDI channel I have the hardware set to, when I send data to a VST instrument it plays, regardless of what MIDI channel I set the instrument on.

I have tried using VST Instrument tracks and VST Racks with associated MIDI tracks.

For example, using a Launchkey Mini, the pads send on channel 10 and the keys on channel 1. If I open Groove Agent SE, load a kit, set the channel to 10, it responds to both the pads and the keys. If I then try sending MIDI data from an external synth, it doesn’t matter what how I set up the channels on either the tracks or the hardware, the VST Instrument sounds. There must be a simple way to set the VST Instruments to respond only to specific channels. As it is at the moment, once I select a given MIDI input, any MIDI note data on any channel sounds the VST.

I have confirmed with MIDI tracks set up for external instruments that I can control drums and synths individually and simultaneously with the Launchkey pads and keys on independent MIDI channels.

I have switched off ‘All MIDI Channels’ for all my MIDI input sources in Device Settings and been through the manual etc.

Is anyone able to point me in the right direction?

2

Ok, so I’ve caught up - you need to set up the Input Transformer to filter out unwanted channels.

Is this the simplest way?

3

Hi,

there are only two Options to selectivley route midi to a certain track:

  1. You can select an individual midi port for incomming midi to a track.
  2. You can filter not wanted channels as described

That means as a result: If your midi-Keyboard/Controller has two separate midi Outs and is capable of Routing the drumpads to one and the keys to the other - you can separate the signals this way.
If your Controller/Keyboard “only” separates “By channel”, you have to Chose Option 2 if you want to record individual channels to individual tracks.

Cheers, ernst

4

Setting the track midi channel to “any” should make it work, if I have correctly understood your problem.

Of course you must also set the correct receive channel directly from the instrument window.

5

Ok, so I was curious and checked out the options on groove Agent SE - unfortunately it seems that it’s made to always work in OMNI mode, so the input transformer solution looks best. Use the transformer as a midi insert in the inspector. Just set it to ignore the channels you don’t want groove agent to respond to (use the delete function)

6

Thanks to you both for your help.

I used the Input Transformer from the Inspector rather than the insert version, but works a treat.